Yes I am returning soon

Basically it's like this - I was in New York - and that is reason enough not to sit behind a laptop, then I had a lot of work, then my laptop became virtually unusable, now I'm in New Zealand.

and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend long periods behind a computer until I return to the UK early in January.

So I hope you all have fun, it is cleansing to spend a month or so away from politics - because you soon realise how empty headed almost all politics really is. However the big political battle of our generation has started, it is NOT an election, it is the battle of ideas. It is free market capitalism against those who point at what is not and proclaim it is a failure, whilst offering nothing besides the failure of the past.

The new US Administration is highly unlikely to embrace open markets and less government. The UK government has already decided today is about mortgaging future taxpayers, more.
The NZ government is saying little, which means, I hope, that lots of hard drives are having "deleted files" recovered to dig up the dirt on the last government. However, you wouldn't have noticed much change - but I'm giving this lot till Parliament sits again, because New Zealand shuts down over summer.

Oh and on that note, it was damned annoying not to be able to go to the supermarket on Christmas Day. That is one law that could do with being gutted - prohibitions on when shopkeepers can open for business. It isn't your business, or the government's, and if you don't want to work there, don't. If you treat it as a religious festival, then good for you, respect that - don't force others to shut down because of your beliefs.

So let's see if any shops get prosecuted for opening on Christmas Day, and if so, what this government's reaction will be. That will tell you a little about how little has changed.

Don't spend time thinking too much about it, it is time to spend this period with loved ones, to enjoy their company and life. I come back this time of year for a reason, and it is obvious when I see the sun, clear skies and the space, and see those I love. The UK this time of year is bleak, enjoy what NZ has.

Have a Happy New Year.

Part privatisation of Royal Mail

While New Zealand's new National/ACT/Maori Party/United Future government continues to reject privatisation, Lord Mandelson, Gordon Brown's Industry Secretary today announced that the British government is part privatising the Royal Mail.

The Royal Mail, for anyone used to NZ Post, is a dinosaur. The list of problems it has is long:
- Complicated tariff structures that encourage use of counter staff, not simple stamp purchases;
- No sale of overseas postage outside Post Offices;
- Manual mail sorting;
- Chronic queuing at major Post Offices;
- Limited opening hours, and very limited hours for parcel pickup (often at fairly distant locations);
- Some locations with only cash payment available.

This all with the ever ubiquitous regulator (Postcomm) and government funded consumer representative body "Postwatch", neither of which exists in New Zealand, which maintains high standards of service, without subsidy AND state owned. The UK persistently believes that open markets need regulation, and consumers can't look after themselves. Just small examples of millions of pounds of unnecessary waste.

So a "strategic minority partnership" is sought from the private sector, to restructure the Royal Mail. Taxpayers would take on the £7 billion deficit in the Royal Mail's pension scheme, because those people work so hard for it don't they? It makes a profit, but loses money on its core letter business. It hasn't helped that it lost its statutory monopoly two years ago. New Zealand Post lost its statutory monopoly in 1998 - at the time Jim Anderton leading the Alliance, predicted mayhem.

Funnily enough, standing in a painful queue at a post office recently I was commenting on how it needed to be privatised.

Gordon Brown can do it - yes his leftwing loser backbench waxed on moaning with their northern accents - you have to ask why it can't be done in New Zealand.

Best train food in the UK (and better than Selfridges)

Yes, I know that sounds potentially like the best hotel in Myanmar, but no - it exists, it is very very good, and so, is about to disappear.

It is on National Express East Anglia - between London Liverpool Street and Norwich. Not all trains, but around every second train at peak times during the week, including the middle of the day, there is a restaurant car on the train - available to all classes, serving excellent food with fantastic service. I've had breakfasts twice and dinner once on this service, and will have it for the last time later this week. You see National Express East Anglia has decided it can make more money replacing the restaurant car with a carriage with seats - not surprising - but it is sad for those who use it.

You see it has been full the three times I have used it. Last time I got on the train 10 minutes before departure, got one of the last seats, and the Christmas menu dishes had already been ordered. So it is popular.

and the food and service are worth it.

For £14.95 on the 0800 from Norwich on Monday 8th December, I got hot porridge, with an unlimited supply of toast and croissants, and selection of preserves including marmite. Well cooked and delicious. Apple juice and bottomless cups of coffee. Then came the eggs benedict, with two eggs, fresh smoked salmon with lemon on fresh soft buttery muffins and lashings of hollandaise sauce. I have had eggs benedict in restaurants in several countries, and this is seriously one of the best I have ever had. Better than the one I had for hotel breakfast two weeks before. The eggs cooked to perfection, the muffins lightly toasted and melting in the mouth, smooth lemony hollandaise and delicious salmon. It was decadently delicious, and with the coffee and juice, was quite a start to a day. There are plenty of hot choices.

Dinner lived up to standards as well, on the 8.30pm from Liverpool Street on 11th December, with a starter of lobster tails on rocket, a mains of grilled salmon fillet with beans and potatoes, and dessert of white and dark chocolate torte. Fresh ingredients, beautifully prepared and cooked. Salmon that melted in my mouth, a delicious sweet professional chocolate torte, as good as any I've ever had. All up £22 including drinks, complementary rolls and butter. I have had far too many meals in restaurants that aren't a patch on this food - cooked by a chef in a 20 year old train going at 100mph. All with silverware, crockery, and a total of six staff working in the carriage. For 30 patrons.

The service from the waiting staff can also show up those in many restaurants. Friendly, constantly helpful, grateful to be serving. I tipped them on the last trip generously as a result. It is only sad that apparently 40% lose their jobs with the change to the uninspiring "cafe bar" service. Clearly the price of the meals, given popularity, could've been popped up a bit to make more money - but tis a sign of the times - only one meal serving could be made in the carriage for the trip.

The restaurant car is removed for the last time this Friday - 19 December. I will be having my last dinner this Thursday evening on the service. It will be sadly missed.

By contrast, other food on trains in the UK deserves the reputation it has earnt. Virgin Trains between London and Manchester offers free food in first class, it has to be, you wouldn't pay for it. Breakfasts comprise a choice of orange and grapefruit juice, a couple of packet supermarket cereals, and then some cold toast, fried eggs, overcooked bland sausages and bacon, or slivers of toast with a small pile of (if your lucky) reasonably cooked scrambled eggs and a couple of slices of salmon. It is almost barely worth the effort AND the staff service ranges from the quite good to the utterly indifferent. Seriously - Virgin Trains should hire those National Express East Anglia catering staff that are made redundant, to teach its staff some simple courtesies - like looking like you give a damn about customers being happy.

However, I've used Virgin Trains so much my expectations are so low. £180 one way first class London-Manchester gets you 2 class service. The London-Norwich restaurant car isn't part of the fare, but anyone first or second class ticket holders, can use it. Beardie could learn something from NXEA. Virgin Atlantic in Upper Class is good, Virgin Trains has all the signs of a lacklustre monopoly.

So could Marco Pierre White. You'd think a restaurant carrying his name would carry his reputation for first class food, but Frankies in Selfridges (yes Oxford Street) was an ep

Update

Ahh been too busy, with work, planning trip home, buying presents, got a new digital camera, and really been enjoying Christmas. So there! Not going to be too much politics for now, because really it is time to forget the control freaks who think making the world a better place is telling people what to do. Bask in the joy of the mismanaged US car companies panicking like scared children begging for the Federal Government to thieve from others to save their "essential industries", when the better outcome would be to let the least competent fold, and be taken over by others. Bask in the joy of remembering Helen Clark is no longer Prime Minister of New Zealand, and think momentarily of how bloody lucky you are that you don't live in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Cuba, Myanmar, Turkmenistan etc. Remember that - and that it isn't really luck - but the wise choices of your forebears, and those who fought tyranny elsewhere.

On a minor note I will miss one minor luxury - the best train food in Britain.

The new government's plan

Pardon me if I am unenthused. Not PC has a detailed run down of what has been announced, and his views pretty much match my own.

So is there anything to be grateful for?
- Tax cuts (modest though they will be) will be welcome, wont be enough to make a difference to the economy, and the unions will cry that the efficiently run first class service state sector wont be able to function properly without the largesse;
- Tougher bail and parole laws. Something positive here, a step towards the core role of the state actually doing its job. Protecting us from serious criminals.

Meanwhile, there is:
- More state welfare to "help people out" in the recession, when it would be better "spent" in giving people bigger tax cuts, instead of giving people another excuse to NOT be frugal;
- Think Big for the 21st century. Doing what Barack Obama has already indicated, throwing money at "infrastructure". Road projects that aren't worth it, subsidising broadband for those who want to watch more video online and can't be arsed paying for it and more. Not the slightest indication that economic efficiency will be at the forefront and squeezing out the private sector to be avoided.
- DNA testing for everyone arrested of imprisonable offences. Screw the presumption of innocence, the state will treat you as a "likely suspect" for the rest of your life whether you committed the crime or not. Of course nice card carrying members of the National Party and their families don't ever get arrested, so the only people who should fear this are probably guilty of crimes we never caught them doing right? Utterly vile - and the European Court of Justice recently ruled the UK government couldn't keep doing this either.

NOTHING substantive to address the deficit of quality and consumer influence over education or healthcare. Wealthy parents who vote National, of course, will keep paying for a private education (and paying taxes for someone else's kids' education too), middle income parents will be forced to pay for state education and can't afford to pay twice. The teachers' unions will still have the government by the windpipe on pay, the absence of performance pay and the education system will still have a centrally controlled syllabus, full of collectivist, anti-reason dogma. Education will still be the cornerstone of how the left maintains control over the minds of so many New Zealanders. ACT (and the UK Tory) policy of the relatively modest Swedish voucher model, is totally absent.

Healthcare? Likewise - not even a chance that there will be fundamental reform of this queuing based, producer/bureaucratically driven system.

Now you will have noticed tinkering, such as a conference proposed by the Families Commission being canned. Looks like a great saving doesn't it?

Why not can the whole damned thing? Oh I know why, because John Key decided, even though ACT gave him a clear majority, and the Maori Party could too, to enter into a confidence and supply agreement with Peter Dunne.

Peter Dunne, who has kept Labour in power for the last two terms.
Peter Dunne, who voted for the Electoral Finance Act, but now "regrets it" conveniently.
Peter Dunne, who IS a party of one, who couldn't have given National a majority, who has been the biggest political whore of the country since Gilbert Myles (albeit Dunne has 10x the intelligence of Myles).

I await the first bureaucracy to be completely scrapped - and I don't mean having its functions all shift into a new one, or bloating an existing one. I mean abolish it.

Families don't function any better with the Families Commission than they did before - let Dunne throw his toys out of his cot. The only people who care about this bureaucracy are Dunne and its employees.